Garmin Edge 130 issues

Does anybody have an Edge 130? I recently bought one, and it's been really unreliable. Is this par for the course for these, or do I have a defective unit? It drops the signal and reports inaccurate distance, plus the barometric altimeter is crap (but those never work well in a bike GPS). Firmware is all updated.

iPhone running Strava on top (which is correct and consistent with lots of identical rides) and the 130 on the bottom. This has sort of thing has happened a couple of times.

If so, be aware that all GPS receivers have trouble in heavily wooded area's and is why a lot of folks will use a paired speed sensor with the head unit to get an accurate track. With the 130 wouldn't surprise me if Garmin went the cheap route with the GPS antenna.

I have the 810, as well as a Fenix 5, and have no issues with accuracy on the road. Under cover, things can get a little sketchy. As you appear to be in an area with heavy tree cover, my guess is signal loss or degradation resulting poor results.

The reason you don't have the issue with your phone, is that phones use what is called Assisted GPS (A-GPS). The GPS chipset in most phones are not full featured, and utilize cell towers as part of the triangulation calculations. So even though you may have a degraded GPS signal, the phone makes up for that using cell signals.

Another thing to check and keep in mind, most of the GPS units have an option to keep to the trail/road, so even if the signal is off or degraded, if you are near a trail, it will map to that trail. I am pretty sure Strava does that by default.

Tree cover doesn't seem to have an impact. It did well in dense tree cover on an MTB ride, and the above ride where it went nuts is fairly open bridle trail that pretty much always has a clear view of the sky. It was mostly OK on a totally open road ride as well, but it lost track of a 1 mile open sky dog walk this morning. For comparison, my Edge 705 never really has issues with signal, though the barometric altimeter is about as inconsistent (the GPS-based elevation in my old 605 is much more consistent, which is all I care about).

Thanks for the info about the phone GPS.

Anyway, I'm hoping it's just defective. I'm going to exchange it for a new one and see if it's any better. Aside from it not really working, it's a neat little device.

Do you have GLONASS enabled? If not, it should give you better results in the woods.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/04/...th-review.html
Ultimately, for most scenarios, the Edge 130 tracks fine with basic GPS. It doesnít quite seem as good though in harder GPS scenarios without also enabling GLONASS or Galileo (which come at a small battery premium). Thatís an area Iím looking to explore over the coming weeks in more detail, and will post separately on. Iíve just picked up a couple Edge 130ís now, and so Iím looking to do some side by side testing of whether Galileo makes a difference. Thereís been a lot of talk in the fitness realm around excitement of Galileo, so Iím interested to see if it actually matters, or if it kinda ends up being like GLONASS Ė sometimes useful, sometimes hurtful.

I just got a Edge 130 about 6 weeks ago. I use it with the Garmin app on my phone, then it gets uploaded to Strava.

The 130 pairs well with my 4iiii power meter. I havenít had any issues with it yet. And I used both Strava and the Garmin on the first few rides to compare the distance and speed. They were almost dead on.

Yes I would exchange yours. Seems a bit funky.

I like the size and weight of the 130. I weighed it at 38 grams for the unit and the supplied stem mount.

Just curious where you bought yours? I got mine from Jenson USA. They are running that 2 day free shipping deal. I think the price is about the same everywhere. 200$.